WMU plans Detroit-area office, programs

HearitPlans for a suburban admissions and outreach office could lead Western Michigan University to begin offering courses in Metro Detroit as early as next year.

The office in Royal Oak, in southern Oakland County north of Detroit, provides WMU a base for recruiting students and from which to perform fund development. It would establish a physical presence for WMU in the heart of a region that generates 37 percent of its present enrollment, which this fall totaled 24,576 students.

Given the large population base in Metro Detroit, WMU needs to create a foothold in the region to ensure a pipeline of students continues flowing to the Kalamazoo campus from Southeast Michigan, Vice President for Enrollment Management Keith Hearit said.

The move to better tap Southeast Michigan represents “a dramatic shift for us in terms of what we want to bring about in student enrollment and generating future enrollments in Kalamazoo.”

“It certainly makes a great deal of sense for us,” Hearit said. “In this economic environment, every last student is most critical to recruit, and we need the ability to be where they are. We don’t feel like we have any other choice. We have to go to them.”

The university now actively recruits students out of Chicago and may deploy representatives in large population centers nationally such as New Jersey, California, Florida and Texas, Hearit said.

WMU trustees last week approved a three-year lease on the new office in Royal Oak, effective Jan. 1.

Hearit sees WMU eventually having multiple locations around the Detroit area.

Royal Oak is the university’s first foray into Southeast Michigan.

“We are a university in the state of Michigan, and our commitment is to the state of Michigan,” Hearit said. “We have to be looking at strategic opportunities and seize them.”

Beyond providing a base to recruit students and do fund development, the office could very well set the stage for offering some undergraduate courses and graduate programs in Southeast Michigan.

WMU is in preliminary discussions with Oakland Community College — which has a campus in Royal Oak — about a partnership that would “allow metro-area students to begin work toward a WMU bachelor’s degree near their homes.”